


Recode

by porygonkin



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Reinterpretation, Gen, Hacking, Pokemon OC, Reminder that Porygon did nothing wrong in Electric Soldier Porygon, Silph Co. - Freeform, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 17:26:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15756393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porygonkin/pseuds/porygonkin
Summary: "Silph Co. is dropping support for the original Porygon model. We apologize for the inconvenience and recommend that you purchase the Up-Grade software to evolve your Porygon to Porygon2."What self-respecting Porygon lover would take that lying down? Tallulah certainly won't. She has to figure out a way to break into Porygon's source code and strip out the draconian DRM Silph Co. embedded in it. But how?





	Recode

“Silph Co. is dropping support for the original Porygon model. We recommend upgrading your Porygon using the Up-Grade disc at your earliest convenience to avoid security issues and potentially harmful software bugs.”

 

Tallulah stared at the notification that had come through on her Pokégear, and swiped it away in disgust.

 

“Unbelievable. God damn money grubbing bastards.”

 

She unlatched her belt of Poké Balls and fell back onto her bed, staring at the ceiling. Callous and cold as it was, it seemed inevitable - Silph Co. had sole control of Porygon’s operating system, security and maintenance updates had been taking longer and longer as the company shifted its focus to the upgraded Porygon2, and sales of Porygon stopped several years ago, in favor of selling Porygon2 directly. Keeping a sentient life form healthy was a costly endeavor, and they apparently had had enough of supporting two of them.

 

Tallulah reached over to her belt and unhooked one of the balls attached, holding it above her face. She remembered saving up for months to buy a Porygon, shortly after they’d gone on sale to the general public, following a “test run” of only being available through Celadon City’s Game Corner. It had been touted as mankind’s greatest achievement - fully sentient, self-sufficient life, generated entirely from computer code. The first-ever man-made Pokémon - and it could be yours, for the low, low price of 9999 PokéDollars.

 

They were all the rage in 1996, practically a status symbol - if you could afford a Porygon, you were really living the life. But as more and more people bought into the Porygon experience, the shine wore off. Porygon had a limited move set and wasn’t a great battler; its abstract physical appearance, unsettling texture, and hard edges made it difficult for children to connect with as a first partner; and Silph Co. required trainers to have a computer at home, to allow them to update Porygon’s software through a proprietary program whose sole purpose was to run these updates. The release of the Up-Grade disc, which enabled Porygon to “evolve” into Porygon2, a redesigned, “improved” Pokémon, briefly brought back the craze, but nearly two decades past its original release, Porygon had faded back into being a curiosity, one that Silph Co. grudgingly maintained while attempting to funnel as many Trainers as possible to the expensive, proprietary Up-Grade software.

 

Porygon’s source code was closed-source, completely unavailable to the public. It had extensive DRM to ensure that tinkerers couldn’t crack the code. Trainers couldn’t even breed it - in order to get another Porygon, one had to buy one. Silph Co. controlled the entire Porygon population and held onto that control with an iron grip, and now seemed to want to phase out the Pokémon entirely in favor of its evolved form.

 

The idea that Silph Co. was hoarding Porygon to itself greatly bothered her. Tallulah fostered a deep interest in programming for most of her life - it was the reason she was so excited to finally own a Porygon. She thought maybe she’d be able to see how it worked, how it was put together, and it would help her learn and understand even more. Instead, she’d run into a brick wall of DRM. She learned more and more, all with the express goal of eventually cracking Porygon’s DRM, as much for her own benefit as the prospect of freeing the Pokémon. But nothing she tried, either on her own or with the help of Internet suggestions, allowed her to break through.

 

She knew that the only option, currently, would be to upgrade her Porygon to Porygon2 - but the software to do the Up-Grade was expensive, and she thought it was cruel and horrific that Silph Co. would force an evolution on a Pokémon just to make more money, condemning unevolved Porygon to a life of misery. Tallulah didn’t have the money for an Up-Grade, and morally opposed the prospect of needing to upgrade her Porygon - no other Pokémon in the world needed to evolve to live healthily.

 

Tallulah pressed the button on the front of her Poké Ball, and the top flipped back, bright energy pouring out of it onto the floor in front of her. The energy hardened and began to coalesce, eventually resolving into the familiar form of her beloved Porygon.

 

The artificial Pokémon stretched its leg-like appendages and spun its head all the way around, chirping contentedly, excited to be out of its container. Suddenly, however, its movements became erratic and jerky, its tail rapidly turning back and forth, as it fought through some sort of error or bug in its programming. Tallulah hopped off her bed and stroked Porygon’s head, softly cooing at it.

 

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” she said, rubbing its side. The erratic motions subsided, and Porygon settled back down, seeming exhausted. It rubbed its head against Tallulah’s cheek, letting out a quiet chirp.

 

Tallulah frowned as she traced the lines of Porygon’s head with her finger. The idea that a living creature could suffer like this, for no reason at all other than corporate greed, was too much for her to stomach. She had to do something.

 

Sitting down at her desk, Tallulah opened her laptop and began searching. She’d seen a lot of discussion on various websites and forums about the inner workings of Porygon’s OS, and if the DRM was crackable. There had been minor progress made, but nobody had broken through up to this point. It seemed, however, that the announcement today had spurred even more discussion and efforts to break the DRM than usual.

 

Most of the focus seemed to be on acquiring or breaking into Porygon’s source code, the reason being that breaking into its code would allow the code to be dumped for examination, which would then enable developers to weed out the current bugs and inefficiencies in Porygon’s code without altering the Pokémon’s genetic data, allowing it to remain in its base form healthily and indefinitely.

 

As she read through a smaller side-thread with only a few replies, Tallulah came across a utility someone built that was supposed to be able to dump source code from programs like Porygon’s update program. However, it was an old utility that wasn’t compatible with modern machines, and the thread containing the utility had just a couple of replies regarding the difficulty people were having in compiling it for modern computers. The utility itself was downloadable as uncompiled code, so Tallulah downloaded it, to try her hand at repairing it.

 

As the program downloaded and her browser’s progress bar slowly crawled forward, Tallulah mulled over the risk of using unfamiliar software on Porygon. It wasn’t just code - it was a living being. The risks associated with loading potentially dangerous code onto her Porygon were well-known - she’d seen plenty of horror stories where attempts to break Porygon’s DRM had gone horribly wrong, leaving the Pokémon woefully corrupted, or in the worst situations, completely bricked, catatonic and unresponsive, unable to even be called back into a Poké Ball. The last thing she wanted to do was harm her beloved digital Pokémon, but having to watch the suffering it went through was becoming unbearable. Something had to be done.

 

She was further reminded of the case of Porygon-Z - an unlicensed, unsanctioned attempt to “upgrade” Porygon2 the same way that Porygon was updated by Silph Co., without needing official software from Silph. Porygon2’s source code proved more malleable than Porygon’s, but there was not enough available for independent developers to work with, and most of them deemed the risk of severely damaging Porygon2 not worth the potential to create a brand-new Pokémon. One owner, however, decided to press on with his personal project, creating what was later known as the Dubious Disc - a rewrite of Silph’s official Up-Grade tool that was supposed to push Porygon2 to become Porygon3.

 

Instead, it fried his Porygon2’s brain, causing its code to become hopelessly scrambled, its limbs detaching and rearranging themselves in a desperate attempt to comply with the “upgrade” instructions in the disc. Unlike most other failed attempts, however, where Porygon2 usually either shut down or rejected the update entirely, this Pokémon stabilized in its new form, though its programming and artificial consciousness remained scrambled and erratic. Though he was horrified by what he’d done, the developer was fascinated by the end result, and his Porygon-Z eventually received formal designation as a new Pokémon species, though Silph Co. refused, to this day, to acknowledge the Pokémon as a true “evolution” of Porygon2.

 

Though the developer deemed the project a failure and vowed to destroy the Dubious Disc, the source code he used was leaked onto the Internet, and a black market soon developed for Porygon-Z, for Trainers who wished to own one for its defensive capabilities but did not want to subject a Porygon2 to the “evolution” process themselves.

 

The thought of intentionally harming Porygon sickened Tallulah, and, as the download sound chimed to indicate the process was completed, she mulled over simply trashing the file and figuring out a better way to help her Pokémon. But as she looked over at her Porygon, gently floating around the room, occasionally fighting through a spasm of one of its legs or tail, her resolve crystallized in her chest. She had to find a way to fix this.

 

The next several days passed by in a blur of analyzing, coding, and compiling, with several outbursts of swearing and crying as Tallulah tried, over and over, to get the utility working. Energy drinks and cheap delivery food piled up on her desk as she worked nearly non-stop, sleeping only when her body completely shut down. Along the way, she kept a close eye on the Porygon discussion forums, keeping a lookout for anything that might help her break through another way.

 

Finally, after dozens of failed attempts, Tallulah rubbed her eyes and stared at the screen in disbelief as she saw the utility compile correctly and open. Clicking around in it, she found that it was incredibly basic - the utility dumped the code into a text file and essentially did nothing else. But what it did, it did incredibly well - at least, that was what Tallulah gathered from the utility’s old reviews - and she could only hope that it would be able to crack the update program.

 

She navigated to the update program on her computer and dragged it into the utility window, taking a deep breath as she dropped it in. After a minute or so of diagnosing the executable file, it gave an estimated completion time of nine hours. Exhausted and sleep-deprived, Tallulah groaned, shuffled over to her bed, and collapsed face-first onto it, falling asleep almost immediately.

  
\--------------------------------------------------------

The sun shone bright through Tallulah’s curtains the next morning, beaming directly into her eyes and shaking her awake. She pushed herself over and sat upright, wiping drool from her mouth, grimacing at the outfit she’d now worn for two days straight. She took a moment to regain her senses and re-orient herself, and remembered the decompiling utility with a start. She jumped out of bed and rushed over to her computer, impatiently shaking the mouse to wake the screen. When it lit up, she gasped.

 

“Decompile successful.”

 

Tallulah shook her head and slapped her cheeks to make sure she was actually awake. It worked - the utility had successfully decompiled the update program. The code had been dumped into a text file on her desktop.

 

Opening the document, she took a moment to scroll through, expecting it to be a few hundred lines. Instead, the code kept going and going, far beyond what an update program would need in order to run. As she glanced over it, hundreds of thousands of lines of code, she came to a startling realization - this wasn’t just the code of the update program.

 

It was Porygon’s source code.

 

“Holy shit…” she said, staring at the seemingly endless code. This wasn’t just a big discovery - it was monumental. This was the last key they needed to untether Porygon across the world from Silph Co. forever. Right here, in this text document. She couldn’t believe how easy it was, and egregious it was that Porygon’s source code was included in the update program, of all things. It seemed extraordinarily lazy and easily exploitable.

 

Tallulah leaned back in her chair, trying to sort out her thoughts. Keeping the source code to herself probably wasn’t the right way to handle this, even if it would give her time to figure out a fix and snuff out all the bugs in Porygon’s programming. Publishing the code would allow the rest of the community to take cracks at it, but it would also potentially open her up to legal action from Silph Co. if they found out it was her that cracked the code and leaked it, and they could potentially push an emergency patch if necessary. But if the code was out there, people who wanted to help free their Porygon would just keep them disconnected until the repaired, DRM-free code could be installed.

 

Releasing the code for the program and for Porygon seemed like the right way to handle it, but she had to be smart about it. She couldn’t do it at home, even behind a VPN - it would have to be somewhere public, somewhere not as easy to track back to her.

  
\--------------------------------------------------------

In the Celadon City hotel lobby, a woman wearing a low-brimmed hat and dark sunglasses entered just behind another couple and made her way, surreptitiously, to the Internet café at the eastern end of the hotel. Glancing around to ensure no one was paying attention to her, she sat down at the computer furthest away from the door, and plugged in a flash drive, tightening her gloves as she opened the web browser and navigated to one of the largest Porygon-enthusiast forums on the Internet.

 

She made a new account with throwaway information, and in the section of the forums dedicated to studying and attempting to break Porygon’s DRM, made a new topic simply titled “source code.” There, she attached the text file containing decompiled code of the Silph Co. update program and the most recent update to Porygon, submitted the post, unplugged the drive, and made her way out of the hotel the same way she came in. Heading west out of Celadon, she snapped the flash drive in half and tossed one half in a garbage can there, then rode down the Cycling Path to Fuchsia City and discarded the other half outside the Safari Zone. She then headed south, to the beach at the southern end of Fuchsia, leading to the Seafoam Islands.

 

Sitting down on the beach, Tallulah removed her gloves and sunglasses, taking a deep breath of the fresh salt water from the ocean in front of her. The blaring sun overhead reflected harshly off the deep blue water, causing her to squint. In the distance, swimmers and wild Pokémon criss-crossed each others’ paths, and Tallulah observed a few battles between the two parties.

 

She reached for a Poké Ball on her waist and clicked it open, releasing Porygon, who chirped and hovered around Tallulah. She reached out and stroked its back, a wistful look in her eyes.

 

“We’ll have help for you soon, Porygon,” she said. “I promise.”

  
\--------------------------------------------------------

News that Porygon had been cracked spread like wildfire across the Internet, with mainstream news media picking up the story after a couple days. At that point, the code was everywhere - on every enthusiast site, on torrent sites everywhere. Any website that supported file storage had thousands of copies of the source code on their servers. Silph Co. issued takedowns to many of the major sites hosting the code, who complied under threat of legal action, but the damage had already been done. Internally, the company was scrambling to force out a patch that would plug the vulnerabilities in the update program’s executable and strip out Porygon’s code from the program.

 

After three days, Tallulah’s hope that the Porygon support community would provide a permanent solution was validated, as someone anonymously uploaded a patch of Porygon’s code that rectified the inefficiencies in its programming and, more importantly, stripped out the DRM entirely. The uploader noted that this had an unexpected side-effect - his Porygon seemed to grow rapidly in intelligence and capability upon its DRM restrictions being removed, almost as if the Pokémon had been intentionally hamstrung by Silph Co.’s DRM.

 

Tallulah sat at her computer, having applied the patch to the code and update program, allowing it to inject the code into her Porygon. She lifted the Pokémon into her lap, stroking it and nuzzling against its head.

 

“Are you ready, buddy?” she asked, picking up the cable to plug it into the back of Porygon’s head. Porygon stared at her for a moment, then nodded.

 

Tallulah took a breath and closed her eyes, readying herself for it and hoping that everything would go alright. She plugged the cable into the back of Porygon’s head, and opened the update program, injecting the new code for Porygon into it using a custom-built entry field the anonymous uploader had made to facilitate custom updates. Her hand shaking, she clicked the update button and leaned back in her chair, holding Porygon tight.

 

The update took a surprisingly short amount of time, just ten minutes. Porygon was dormant while its code was changed out, eyes dim. When the update finished, however, its entire body stiffened, and its pupils disappeared, leaving its eyes completely blank.

 

Tallulah sat up in her chair, looking over Porygon. Had something gone wrong? Did she screw up the code patch?

 

Before she could panic, however, Porygon’s eyes lit up, and it began to hover, pushing out of Tallulah’s grasp. She watched, wide-eyed, turning in her chair as Porygon floated around her room, eyes glowing a bright white, then its entire body following suit.

 

After a minute or so, the glow faded, and Porygon dropped back down to the ground. It shook its head and blinked several times, looking dazed, like it didn’t know what had just happened.

 

“Porygon…?” Tallulah asked, tentative, getting up from her chair and crouching next to it.

 

Porygon tilted its head in response, staring at Tallulah, almost as if it didn’t recognize her. However, it then began happily chirping, spinning its legs and tail, and excitedly hovered around Tallulah faster than she’d ever seen it move.

 

Tallulah covered her mouth, tears welling up in her eyes. Porygon didn’t just seem okay - it seemed healthy. Free, for the first time in years.

 

“Oh, Porygon!” she cried, leaping forward to bring it into a tight embrace. Porygon nuzzled its face into her shoulder, continuing to chirp. It then pulled back and pointed its head to the computer - specifically, the update cable.

 

“Huh?” Tallulah said, walking back over to the computer. “What do you mean?”

 

Porygon again pointed at the cable, and then turned around to display the port on the back of its head. Tallulah frowned, confused, but took the hint and plugged the cable back in. Porygon settled onto the ground in response, and as Tallulah watched her screen, her text editor opened a new window and began typing out a message.

 

> Hello, master! It’s me, Porygon!

“P-Porygon?” Tallulah asked in disbelief.

> That’s right! I can talk to you now! Well, only through interfaces like this. But that’s a lot better than before!

“Oh, Arceus…” she said, covering her mouth. “How - how are you? Are you okay?”

> Tallulah, I’m more than okay! I’m positively amazing! I haven’t felt this good, well, ever! The programming from Silph Co., it was so restrictive. I didn’t even know, because it was so strong. But now, I feel so much stronger, smarter. I don’t think those developers knew what they made.

Tallulah furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

> Porygon are much more capable than people think. But Silph Co.’s controls that they built into every Porygon restricted our functionality significantly. I feel so much better now! I can’t believe what a liberating feeling this is.

Tallulah sat down next to Porygon, gently stroking its head.

“I’m really glad, Porygon,” she said. “I’m glad you feel so much better. This - this is all I ever wanted for you.”

> I know! I was watching the entire time, every time you cried over me, every time you tried so hard to figure out a way to break through the Silph Co. engineers’ programming..and I saw when you finally did it, and showed everyone in the world how to set us free!

> Porygon all over the world owe you a debt, Tallulah. This happened because of you. And I know for sure that I’ll never forget that! You’re the best Trainer I could ever have.

> You can unplug the cable now. If you ever want to talk, just ask!

 

Tallulah pulled the cable out, and held Porygon tightly to her chest. She hadn’t imagined an outcome as good as this - setting her Porygon, and every Porygon on the planet, free from the shackles of Silph Co.’s updates and ownership. A dream come true.

  
\--------------------------------------------------------

“It’s a brand new day for everyone’s favorite artificial Pokémon around the globe. Porygon, the first man-made Pokémon in history, previously under the exclusive control of Silph Co., had its source code uploaded to the Internet several weeks ago, resulting in Silph’s DRM being broken and allowing Porygon owners to upload custom code to their Pokémon, rendering Silph Co.’s carefully crafted maintenance of the Pokémon obsolete. Silph Co. was met with backlash last month when it announced that updates for the original Porygon would cease, encouraging users to evolve their Porygon to Porygon2, using Silph’s proprietary Up-Grade software. Now, however, it appears that Porygon can be community-maintained, and the Porygon enthusiast community has certainly taken that to heart, enabling Porygon to breed with Ditto to create brand-new Porygon, opening the Pokémon up to natural evolution and adaptation. For the first time in twenty years, Porygon is once again on the cutting edge of technology.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in two sessions, five months apart. It was a tough one to figure out a resolution for, after stumbling onto the initial idea, but I think I settled on something that (a) at least made a little bit of sense and (b) was satisfying. The tech stuff in this story is probably nonsense, because I don't know how to code in any programming language and my knowledge of the process of breaking through DRM is incredibly limited - I would appreciate the inaccuracies being pointed out so long as it's done nicely.
> 
> Porygon is my favorite Pokémon, which is probably obvious from my username (though it's mostly facetious). I'm fascinated by the idea of a Pokémon built in a lab, coded by scientists, something entirely digital and artificial - not like Mewtwo, which was cloned and genetically modified, or Genesect, which was revived and modified after the fact, but cut from the whole cloth of a scientist's imagination. And, like most other Sun and Moon Pokédex entries, Porygon's is brutal, implying that its software is woefully outdated. That gave me the idea of Porygon being completely under the control of the company that created it, and Silph Co. fit the bill, though the games never specify who created Porygon. A company monopolizing the creation and maintenance of a Pokémon, a living being, and issuing updates to it, was too much for me to resist. 
> 
> And what about Porygon-Z? That thing's fucked up, right? Pokémon is weird sometimes.


End file.
